Heidi Duckler mixes the kinetic and the static, having choreographed contemporary dance performances, since 1987, in Angeleno urban spaces, ranging from Laundromats to private Modern houses. Her most recent venue is the 51st floor of the former ARCO tower, now the Paul Hastings Tower, which she has recast as a backdrop for Cleopatra, CEO. This is a retelling, partly inspired by Stacy Schiff’s new book, of the story of Cleopatra, her lovers Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and the ancient battle of Actium, and is on show this month.

This past Thursday, 80 or so friends and supporters of the company gathered for the opening performance, following dancers as they pounded their way through the eerily empty office spaces overlooking downtown Los Angeles, to the periodic, and spirited, accompaniment by young soprano Zoe Johnson (daughter of LA architect, Scott Johnson; I am no opera expert but she seems amazingly talented).

It was, said hubby Bennett Stein, aka Good4Nothing Connoisseur, “Outer space meets Glee meets Ancient Egypt, all set to a funky disco opera electronica musical smorgasbord.”

Orly Shuber is a dancer, filmmaker, photographer (and contributing filmmaker for the recent show, Rethink LA.) She was at the dance and wrote the following (and took these photos):

Dancers interacting with architecture and design in an empty office space on the 51st floor of the Paul Hastings Tower in downtown Los Angeles is quite a breathtaking experience.

My friend Scott Timberg has been writing a very interesting series for Salon about the “creative class” and what he sees as its decimation, largely by digital technology and the internet economy (and the resulting loss of ability to monetize “creative” careers), but also by the recession and other obstacles to self-employment like staggering healthcare costs. It’s really worth a read. His latest target is the architecture profession, one that he cites as the quintessential cool creative career, that now stands in tatters.

However, on reading his story, I had a very strong sense of deja vu (and advancing age!).

I first visited Los Angeles in 1987 and the joint was then jumping for architects, as it was in many cities caught up in the building boom of that time. Then I moved from London to LA in 1991 and found all my new architect friends out of work, in the economic slump of the early 90s. The New York Times was running articles like this one, that sounded remarkably similar to the Salon piece in their “it will never be the same again” declarations about the profession.

Many architecture grads then moved directly out of school into alternative careers, like movie production design, some temporarily, some for good. In fact, at a panel I hosted at LACMA last week, Benjamin Ball, one half of noted installation designers, Ball-Nogues (see their 2005 Maximilian’s Schell in picture, above), recalled how he took that route on leaving SCI-Arc in 1994. But Ball’s work, as well as that of other very talented architects who have used the time not spent building buildings to experiment with new ideas, is a reminder that in the architecture world recessions, while indisputably brutal for ones livelihood, can be a time of regeneration for the art and science of building. Schools fill up with students and out-of-work practitioner-teachers who use the time in academe to test new theories. Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and other hotshots of the go-go late 1990s and early 2000s famously spent the recession of the 1970s dreaming up the ideas on paper that found form much later.

Architecture follows real estate, which moves in boom and bust cycles (a fact that makes me continually wonder, why don’t architecture schools teach economics and real estate development?). Even now, I sense from architects and developers an uptick in the economy and in building opportunities. The interesting question is, what comes next? What building types will dominate, where will the demand be, and what language can we expect from the next generation of recession-surviving architects?

One further note: a popular reaction to the market crash, and resultant loss of architecture work, has been to read it as a welcome end to an era of “starchitecture.” This Metropolis commentary by Thomas Fisher, lauding the architecture for humanity works by the likes of Cameron Sinclair and Emily Pilloton, makes that argument.

It ain’t gonna happen.

Back in the recession of the early 1990s, the New York Times article, mentioned above, quoted an architect who anticipated an end to the phenomenon where “developers collected architects the way they collected art in the 80′s.”

After a brief pause for breath, architecture as art — and commodity — was baaack.

Architecture is an expression of our primal need to reshape our environment, and it takes many forms and serves many kinds of clients, a diverse picture not always reflected in the media, which tends to focus on the extremes of “star” architecture and its perceived antithesis: socially conscious, collective, community projects. Those forms can be lavish and extraordinary as well as functional and socially improving (sometimes a piece of architecture even manages to be all those things at once!). They can also, at worst, be mediocre and degrading.

As the economy picks up, I think we can expect architecture to continue to run the full gamut, and for many people to continue to aspire to be architects. As the French — who gave us Versailles and Jean Prouve’s pre-fab, low-cost housing – would say, plus ca change. . .

If you have thoughts on this, let me know as we may focus on this on an upcoming DnA.

At the end of his review of ”Best in Art” in 2011 review, LA Times art critic Christopher Knight wrote that in his view the ”worst development” of the year was  “the institutional confusion of fashion with art.” This after the “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” show at the Met attracted over 660,000 people, making it their eighth most well-attended show, ever.

Clearly MOCA is not daunted by such a charge, as its director Jeffrey Deitch readies for his third exhibit of fashion by California clothing designers with an artistic vision. It will be about the marvelous work of Rudi Gernreich, and follows displays at MOCA PDC of ethereal dresses by Rodarte, and, currently, the photographic and fashion fusion of Hedi Slimane. The latter closes soon. KCRW’s Abe Rivera visited the show, and wrote this:

HEDI SLIMANE: CALIFORNIA SONG

New York Cityis known for its abundance of artists and culture, but Hedi Slimane seems to argue that California rivals the obvious in his first west coast solo exhibition, California Song. Focusing on artists, musicians and young urbanites, Slimane captures a seductive vulnerability and elegance in his sometimes-unlikely subjects. He pairs his subjects with mirrors and objects or architecture as to create a narrative giving insight to the subjects at hand. His signature high contrast black and white style sheds a new light on theCalifornia lifestyle.

The exhibition is divided into two rooms. A white room, which includes a labyrinth of stacked photos, mounted on plywood and a black room, housing the highlight of the exhibition – a wall-to-wall cube that projects more photographs against an ethereal soundtrack performed by No Age.

Hedi Slimane: California Song runs through January 22nd at theMOCAPacificDesignCenter.

There are a thousand stories in the naked city, as they say, and when it comes to design in LA, many of them are good. So it’s always hard to determine what to make the focus of the once-monthly DnA. But this January, it just seemed like a natural to ruminate on a newly unveiled design/artwork that is about the big city; namely,  Chris Burden’s new installation at LACMA, Metropolis II (right).

 Known among art cognoscenti for his madcap — and at times masochistic – performance art of the early 1970s, Burden has emerged, with Urban Light, below, and now Metropolis II, as an impressionist of our strange and wonderful megalopolis (which can be read as an urban anomaly or a bellweather for cities everywhere).

On the show, hear about the making of the piece and Burden’s “utopian” vision, in which automated cars belt around at over 200 miles an hour. (The constant whirr of  the tiny cars as they whizz around may have you thinking this Metropolis is “dystopian.”)

Michael Govan — who has a genius, it seems, for melding large-scale art, architecture and landscape into an urban experience of its own —  situates Metropolis in the history of art and the history of LA; and Dan Neil, the skeptical auto critic, takes aim at monolithic fantasies.

(Also read The Good4NothingConnoisseur’s impression of the piece, without the sound effects, here.)

The topic of “city” segues naturally into two other segments, one about four Chinese-American architects who made a little-known mark on the LA cityscape in the post-war — and found themselves dividied between two schools of design: Modern, in the spirit of the time (as seen in this photo by Julius Shulman of a residence designed for his family in Silverlake, by Eugene Choy, courtesy, © J. Paul Getty Trust) , and, for their Chinese-American clients in Chinatown, Chinese-inflected architecture.

It’s truly a reminder of how things have changed in fifty years to hear that Eugene Choy, one of the four, had to go door to door in Silverlake asking for permission to move into the neighborhood; and it is fascinating to learn about Helen Fong, who made her mark on the Googie classics like Panns, Norms and Bob’s Big Boy.

Also on the show, a taster of what promises to be a tasty discussion coming up at LACMA on the 31st of this month: the conversation will be called Temporary Insanity, I’ll host, and it’s a conversation with three practitioners of what has been a fascinating trend in design these past few years: the creation of installations by architects in public spaces that serve no purpose other than to shape space in structurally and materially experimental ways. Benjamin Ball of Ball-Nogues (see their early project, right) at Materials & Applications, called Maximilian’s Schell, photographed in situ by Oliver Hess) offers up some insights as to what draws tomorrow’s architects to this mode of design and why it’s so magical for those that witness it.

The GOOD4NOTHING CONNOISSEUR went to see Metropolis II when the art-piece was switched off, the cars and trains were still and the room was devoid of the constant whirr of racing vehicles. The experience is different; one focuses on the visual, not the aural. He describes his impressions here:

Directly off the room that’s home to Richard Serra’s giant piece, “Band,”– a woozy ribbon of slithering tall towering, rust-colored weatherproof steel that lures and caresses you — past a large bank of TV sets that flick and flash alternating roiling permutations of the USA flag, called “Video Flag Z” by Nam June Paik, is the shining city on the hill of the future. . . but all in rock and roll steam punky miniature. This little magical marvel is Chris Burden’s latest, a new and shimmering full sensorial drench of an experience called “Metropolis II.” You won’t believe the spell this little mythic cityscape puts on you.

It’s a scale model right out of your brain’s faulty memory bank of your favorite urban flavored sci-fi flick. Yes, I thought fleetingly of Luc Bresson’s “The 5thElement,” Lang’s “Metropolis,” (right) “Blade Runner” LA, the planet Crematoria from “Chronicles of Riddick,” Alderan—but that all got eclipsed by the sudden overwhelming rush of consciousness that made me feel I’d shapeshifted into the all powerful, radioactive, fire belching Godzilla just out for an apocalyptic stroll to graze upon a dense oasis of miniature sky scrapers, ten-lane hot wheels traffic jams and snaking toy train sets all on super highways and train tracks swooping and cantilevering up and down and all around massively tall, bejeweled sky scrapers.

The site of it filled me with a child’s unquenchable appetite for play, fantasy and delusions of grandeur. I felt myself transforming, my muscles steroidally popping, expanding, flexing, my teeth lengthening and sharpening with galvanized titanium, all testosterone pumps kicking into overdrive, and the biggest, dumbest smile creasing my face like a madman gleefully uncaged. WARNING: Abandon Almost All Self Control Ye Who Enter Here – were the words that played on a loop in my head. I was set free… I wanted to trudge and stomp through it all, lift and heave and toss bridges and turrets and spires, mangle and munch my way to nuclear monster screeches of gleeful destruction, feasting and devastation. I lusted to bite a subway car in half and relish the passengers tumbling out like shredded taco lettuce. I felt like a punk rocker, or a punk rocker god, I wanted to fall into buildings and roll over mass transit tressels, plug in my electric guitar and feedback like a mad fool of zapmastery, then maybe leap up in the air propelled by Pete Townsendesque scissor kicks and float and hover above and through the city’s dense canopy of freeway ramps, train tracks and penthouses past the Eiffel Tower like simulation, the 100-turreted mosque, and then tread through the veritable kelp bed of office towers and mid-town 60-story hotels that felt like my home town of Manhattan.

The piece should be called, instead of Metropolis II, “Omnipotence, Too” because it makes you feel like a big hulking super creature with unlimited super powers at your fingertips. I set to lustfully photographing it, poking my camera past the stantions, and getting warned repeatedly by the security guards on duty. Sure, I turned into a punk rock Godzilla, but you might become, oh I insist, whatever your fancy dictates. Turn it loose now. And channel one of the floats in the Thanksgiving Day parade come to ominous life. Be a giant balloon Kermit the Frog or Snoopy or Bart Simpson. Are those too rude sounding, ok, then dial it down and be the Ghostbuster’s super happy, pacifist, though Navy seaman-attired Stay Puft Man, softly, dopily romping through Manhattan like a 5-yr-old in a bouncy castle. The choice is yours. You gotta try it, it’ll set you free, even if just for a precious few seconds. Thanks Dr. Chris Burden for the art as mood swinging pick me up.

If you’re like me, you probably didn’t know that the largest collection of puppets in the country is right here in Southern California, in a nondescript back building of a church on Fair Oaks avenue in Pasadena, where it shares space with the church’s weekly AA meeting. And if you didn’t know that then you also wouldn’t know that it’s probably not going to be there for much longer. That is unless something is done soon…

Its very easy to miss the International Puppetry Museum since being that its in the back building of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church its not visible from the street, and there’s no signage to speak of.  I credit the fact that I was on foot (having just gotten off the bus) to my noticing it at all.

Once inside, at first you may be disappointed. The space is small, and with already so little room to spare, its equally split between a makeshift display area, and an area devoted to storage with boxes upon boxes waiting to be sorted in a process that’s been ongoing now for almost four years.

Though there is no permanent exhibition space, pieces from the collection are regularly sent (about twice a year) across country to institutions doing shows about puppetry or puppets as reflections of culture. So it was that when I visited (as part of the Modern Committee of the Los Angeles’ monthly meeting) a couple hundred puppets, including many usually on regular display, had been shipped to the Cannon Art Gallery in Carlsbad. (To be part of the exhibit, ‘The World on a String’, which culminated at the end of 2011.)

The secret is to have Alan Cook give you a tour (he’s more than happy to) – he knows the story of each and every piece; its significance, who made it and why. He’ll take you up to the loft area, every inch of which is covered with puppets. He’ll tell you about the collection; his life’s work, now in its third in a series of temporary homes in its long search to be a museum. (Though this space is not nearly enough and it additionally takes up two garages at Cook’s home as well as storage bins both in his backyard and at the church.)

Consisting of over 5,000 puppets (of practically every type and spanning all five continents), more than 1,000 books and hundreds of videos, the collection was amassed from gifts, bequests from other collectors as well as Cook’s own purchases. Its books related to puppetry can be used on site and includes many first editions as well as signed copies, collectors’ items in their own right. Such books as, Helen Haiman Joseph’s 1920, A Book of Marionettes, the first definitive history on puppetry written in English.

The actual number of items in the collection is unknown since they’ve only recently begun to be catalogued, though the volunteers doing the work reached the 3,000 puppets mark after having gone through only approximately half. This number puts the IPM collection ahead of the Detroit Institute for the Arts (about 800), the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts (about 1,300), and the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry (which has around 3,000), making it the largest, by far, collection of puppets in the US.

Puppets were a big part of entertainment in early 20th century Los Angeles. There was even a Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry consisting of world class puppeteers, which put out the publication Puppet Life. But as an entertainment center Los Angeles has had a horrible track record when it comes to preserving its history and unfortunately if this collection doesn’t find a home in Los Angeles it will elsewhere. And yet another Los Angeles treasure will have been lost, like Debbie Reynolds’ collection of movie costumes (which included Marilyn Monroe’s iconic dress, and Dorothy’s dress and ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz) or Forrest J. Akerman’s collection of science fiction and horror memorabilia.

In its effort to find a home for the collection, the IPM has found the Northwest Puppet Center in Seattle to be a good fit. So far only a few puppets have been sent but if nothing materializes locally the entire collection will be heading north and out of Southern California for one last time.

Visiting the museum: The IPM is located at 1062 N. Fair Oaks Avenue – Pasadena, CA 91103. Since its volunteer run, you can either make an appointment by calling 626-296-1536, or go on Wednesdays between 10a and 4p, which is when the volunteers are there.

Ceramicists tend to live to a very late age. So said Gloria Gerace, director of Pacific Standard Time, on this DnA, when talking about ceramic art and craft on display in Pacific Standard Time’s design shows. She pointed out that Beatrice Wood lived to 105 while others with work on exhibit typically lived at least into their late 90s.

And now we have the news of another ceramicist leaving us, also at 105 years; namely, the gifted Eva Zeisel. The Hungarian-born Zeisel (whose salt and pepper shakers are shown, left) arrived in New York after extraordinary trials in Europe — imprisonment in a Soviet prison and subsequent flight from Nazi-controlled Austria. She was embraced in New York in the 1940s, saw her work collected by MOMA and dedicated the rest of her life to the creation of curvaceous functional objects, in what she described as a “playful search for beauty.” She even lived long enough to see her work enjoy a rebirth of public interest in the last decade.

But what might account for such longevity, and could there be a connection to ceramics? Beatrice Wood attributed her vitality to “chocolate and younger men”; Eva Zeisel was certainly invigorated by her passion for her work. When I talked about this with Gloria Gerace, we wondered if there was something specific to pottery that lengthened life — the connection to the earth, maybe; the meditative nature of working at a potter’s wheel (at least, when you know what you are doing); the physical exertion demanded in pottery-making, strengthening heart and lungs and arms; or simply, the calming nature of creating form with ones hands.

If you have thoughts on this, let us know. In the meantime, Eva Zeisel, RIP.

Scene Around Town, by Bennett Stein (aka The Good4NothingConnoisseur):

I recently accompanied DnA on an outing to Hollywoodland and the epicenter of production companies and sound stages, to what I was promised would be a holiday party. There we found ourselves at the HQ of JustOneEye.com, the online boutique for the self-described “world’s finest in design, fashion, and art” at a top-secret launch party for Pasadena’s finest, most illustrious fashion duo, Rodarte, and their new book of the same name. Realized in collaboration with art photographers Catherine Opie and Alec Soth, Rodarte offers up a visual meditation on their clothing and its inspiration from California sites, delivered with the offbeat sense of beauty characteristic of Opie, Soth and Rodarte’s Mulleavy sisters (see images, left).

We get there to find five burly Armani-suited security dudes, all with Secret Service earpieces and sleeve mics. You’d have thought el presidente was in the hood. A door sentry checks our names on a clip board ipad connected to an AC plug. He locates our names on his “watch list” and ushers us into a foyer with lights at all angles a-twinkling every which way and another four security goombas, with beefy steroidal grimaces, who point us down a hall. I half expect to run into Winston Churchill, or Errol Flynn and Hedy Lamar activating a nuclear warhead guidance system for assembly inside a V2 rocket. The whole building had that 1940s secret war bunker ambiance. Then we’re ushered down a hallway where people are milling about, and in and out, of two wicked bright and stylin’ rooms where lots of Andy Warhola types are trying on biomorphic-seeming ladies dress pumps amid unusual mannequins decked to the nines in space-age, love kitty, Rodarte conceived threads.

Then down another hallway, that made you feel like you were on an old US Navy destroyer patrolling for U-boats, on into a long rectangular room with pipes and exposed ceiling guts, in which there are black tie (sans jacket) waiter mermen swanning about with and distributing overfilled flutes of bubbly. I thought, a-ha! this is where the hors d’oeuvre must be, the sushi cocktail bites, the duck confit with fois gras in ceramic spoons: yumville at last. But no, it’s just where the cult members apparently meet to be sedated before beaming up to the mothership. Not a single whiff of a snack within nasal range, anywhere to be found, not even one bowl of stale pretzels.

Then, shock of shockers, there is a cluster of mannequins all with black plastic overstuffed garbage bags for heads, which were standing as if frozen in mid flight from an alien invasion saucer crash, and then I realized yes, these must be the pods being grown for each of us invitees to eclipse our heretofor normal lives with fabulously newly styled selves. And I felt partially saved, and even if this inevitability was not the real deal, and I was just hallucinating some takeover of my soul scenario—I was at least forewarned to review and rethink the contents of my entire winter wardrobe. Then we bump into Doug Xmas and Jennifer Kellen of Ace (see below), devilishly taking in the ambiance like characters in a five-act Jean Paul Sartre or Samuel Becket play. Oh, and over against the wall is Joe Pitka, the hugenormous commercial director, preening and being tended to by 7 foot tall bionic super model humanoid giraffe females. And I realized this was an art happening because the Rodarte ladies Laura and Kate Mulleavy (Laura in photo, left) were right there at a long special table signing coffee table book size copies of their new darkly intriguing, artfully photographed, tome of their latest head-turning, wearable artwork creations.

At that point I knew I needed to just calm down and observe, and await further instructions for how to live and dress more skillfully in this town. I ceased making small talk and just marveled at the security men and knew they were all part of the set dressing to lend an air of drama and gravity to the secret underground world of Andy Warholaland.

Who’s Your Dada?

After leaving the Rodarte event we drove down La Brea and passed by the ginormous 25-foot tall, stainless steel bust of Lenin. Turns out this is a work of art called “Miss Mao (trying to poise herself at the top of Lenin’s head)” by the Gao Brothers of Beijing, and it stands at the entrance to the new “museum” of ACE art-wheeler-dealer Doug Chrismas. The bust first made its entrance at a jumping exhibit and shindig we attended on a recent Saturday night thrown with SCI-Arc for Peter Noever, the former longtime director general of the Vienna-based MAK Center and its Los Angeles satellite at the Schindler House on King’s Road in West Hollywood. Here are my recollections:

I have to report it was one evil, swank-scene party that brought out some of LA’s heppest art-chitects. Frank Gehry led the pack of fugitive design notables and rogues. Famed minimalist film director John Cassavetes’ thespian muse Seymour Cassel (in photo, right) was there in all his proletariat charm, kissing babies, winking at lovely ladies whilst humming Pete Seeger work songs.

It all went down in the ACE Museum’s awe-inspiring space, under a fab, swooping, reverse bow truss ceiling, all moodily lit with eye-throwing Kubrickian perspectives to infinity. Xmas and his Sci-Arch droogies were hosting what clearly was a throwback to a World Summit of the People’s Commissars Of The Soviet Union as if art directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.

Noever is a very wicked cat, with his Siberian droogie grin par excellence, and love of troublemaking who takes his Stoli with a teardrop of dry vermouth.  He is immensely charming, in spite of his dictatorial, whipcrack swagger, and has managed to officiate over many an arty happening in a whole range of communist world capitals, like Havana, Moscow, Pyongyang and LOS ANGELES, to name just a few.

Noever the moever…  Man, I could have sworn I overheard Tristan Tzara, the WWI-era co- founder of Dadaism, there at the party saying, ‘Dada is neither madness, nor wisdom nor irony, look at me, dear bourgeois.’ I say this because legendary word trickster, Eric Owen Moss, director of SCI-Arc, was also on hand playing co-host and he was muttering something about Peter Noever being a champion of art that coughs up the moon, art that regurgitates non-sequiturs, art that urinates on mediocrity. Hey, I’ll have some of that, thank you very much. Who doesn’t love a little misbehaving art now and again? It’s a punk thing, an anarchist’s head trip thing, in case your mind is beginning to hurt.

I ain’t naming names, but wow, this was a kind of aesthetic gangsters’ ball. I mean there’s Bill Stern talking about the subversive uses of ceramics. There’s Seymour telling me there’s only one political party in the USA. There’s Chrismas’ partner, Jennifer Kellen, in red tights and pink shoes. It was raining red in here.

The rest is strictly classified. Refer to FBI case files filed under “THE (SECRET) RETURN OF (NOEVER)” because I’m sure Homeland Security had the place wired, agents on the ground, eyes in the sky. Think I’m exaggerating? Fine, here’s your proof: As guests swarmed the massive almost Oscar Niemeyer-designed space just out front by the facade a HUGE crane or two were lifting HUGE shiny chrome cross sections of a HUGE head off a HUGE flatbed truck. HUGE showers of arc welding sparks splattered the pavement as dozens of workers hoisted, guided and welded the HUGE chrome modules together to make a HUGE head of… Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the HUGE Bolshevik Commie God.

One thing is for certain, don’t let it ever be said the architect crowd ain’t got style, pizzazz and a taste for the forbidden. Viva La Revolucion, El Cadillac Communistas!

The [Secret] Return of Noever: A SCI-Arc Curated Exhibition is up through December 30.

One of the great privileges of hosting or producing a radio show at KCRW is the opportunity it provides to talk to really interesting people. So it is in that spirit of gratitude that I urge you to listen to today’s DnA, where you will find a mix of penetrating insight, humor and savoir-faire delivered to you from guests Marty Kaplan; Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan; and De LaB’s Marissa Gluck, Alissa Walker, Haily Zaki and Erin Cullerton. 

The show takes a look back at the year of tumult (protests, economic unease, creative landscape being transformed online) as it relates to design and architecture, and looks forward to making the most of the holidays, without driving oneself to distraction. Simon and Jonathan’s recommendations: Give everyone the same, great gift, and don’t watch upbeat movies!

With that, I’d like to thank all of you who have followed DnA this year. I,  and all of us who produce the show,  so appreciate it. Please keep me posted about what you’ve liked, disliked, or would like to hear more about in future. And have a very Happy Holiday!